Well, now we know what it will take to put a stop to the foreclosure crisis – a massive storm affecting the entire Eastern seaboard. For homes in that area at risk of foreclosure, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will offer a small bit of mortgage relief: The government-controlled mortgage finance giants said Tuesday that [...]

Ed DeMarco, the Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency for the past three years, will deliver a speech today at the Brookings Institution that leans in the direction of allowing principal reduction on Fannie and Freddie-backed loans in certain cases. This is definitely a crack in the otherwise rigid objection to principal reduction [...]

Here’s the second installment in the review of the foreclosure fraud settlement documents. Exhibit D in this document lays out the menu for credits toward the settlement. When we talk about credits, the federal government and state AGs want you to assume that means a set amount of principal reductions that the banks will grant. [...]

One of the responses you often get from official sources about the failed HAMP program is that it was but one of a string of programs implemented using TARP funds to help homeowners. So just because HAMP has used barely $3 billion of the $50 billion in available funds, that’s not a full picture, because [...]

So this is kind of funny: the White House is telling its allies that they will “take a more aggressive role” to protect homeowners this year. First off, we have had a crisis in housing and foreclosures every year of the Obama Administration. By stating that they will be more aggressive this year, the White [...]

The Obama Administration has rolled out a series of small initiatives designed to help borrowers facing foreclosure. They supplemented the Hardest Hit Fund with the Emergency Homeowner Loan Program (ELHP), designed to use $1 billion to give no-interest loans of up to $50,000 to distressed borrowers who have suffered from unemployment, underemployment or medical catastrophe. [...]